Spinneret will not work with the OM2P router.

P!-Ro

I am trying to use two spinneret servers connected to OM2P routers to communicate to use in a robotics project. When the servers are connected to my home router everything works like it should, I can ping it, connect via telnet, and read html off of internet servers. Once I connect it to the OM2P router, nothing works anymore. I know I can get a web connection from the router because connecting the same cable to my laptop will give me an internet connection. I modified the code to have the same gateway that my computer connection showed, and I know I am within the bounds for the various IP's I've tried. The MAC address is the same as is on the sticker. When I SSH into my router and do arp -at, it will either not show the IP at all, or it will show the IP with an <incomplete> next to it. If I try arp -s <spinneret IP> <spinneret MAC> it will show up correctly in the table, but will still not ping and the spinneret still can't pull html from the web like it could when connected to the home router. I've tried multiple OM2P routers, multiple spinneret's, multiple cables, and tried pinging from my computer and from the ssh connected router, so hardware problems are minimal. The primary code I've been using comes from here: http://forums.parallax.com/showthread.php?134400-Spinneret-Simple-TCP-object. This is the second day I've been trying to figure this out so any ideas for what else to try would be appreciated.

Mike G

Does your laptop have WiFi? If so, was WiFi turned off during the connectivity test?

Is the Open-Mesh gateway device connected to a DSL/Cable modem?
Is the gateway connected to the local LAN via a router?
Have you tried Bridge mode?

Describe your network configuration.

P!-Ro

I tried pinging both over wifi and over ethernet (wifi turned off) and from the router itself. The OM2P has two ethernet ports so I would connect that to my laptop and the other to the spinneret. The router uses NAT by default, but I did try changing it to bridged and it still didn't work. I mostly tested it by having one router connected to my home internet, wirelessly connected to the other router, feeding the internet connection to my laptop/spinneret over a wired connection. The internet did work on my laptop, with no connectivity to the spinneret.

max72

could it be a port forwarding issue?

Mike G

I still do not understand the setup.

Internet/ISP -> Cable/DSL -> Router [LAN]-> OM2P Gateway )))))) OM2P Repeater -> Spinneret/Laptop

Mike G

From the manual.

SSID #2 (Private SSID) Settings
The second SSID is usually used as a private or corporate SSID and is useful for setting up an administrative network. If you don’t need a second SSID, we recommend disabling this. If you are using this SSID, your options are below.

Enable: A switch that lets you enable/disable the second SSID. If you’re not using this network, disable it.

Hide: Check this box to hide the SSID from display.

Bridge: When checked, bridge mode will give access to LAN resources by users on this network. It disables NAT and DHCP on this SSID. Client DHCP addresses will be issued by your LAN or modem.

Wired Clients: When checked, the Ethernet ports on the back of the nodes will be connected to SSID#2 and will inherit its properties. Otherwise, they are connected to SSID#1.

Network Name: The broadcast name for this SSID. This is what your users will see to connect to.

Password: WPA Key. Leave blank for an open network. Keys must be 8

P!-Ro

The setup as you mentioned it sounds correct to me. I've been using the private SSID with wired clients checked, but perhaps I should try it without that checked. I will try some more testing tonight and I'll try and describe step by step what I'm doing. Thanks for your help so far.

P!-Ro

I think I found the problem, now I just need to find the solution. It seems the router doesn't support static ip's, only DHCP. I will have to look around and see if there is a way to manually add the ip in the router.

Mike G

I think I found the problem, now I just need to find the solution. It seems the router doesn't support static ip's, only DHCP. I will have to look around and see if there is a way to manually add the ip in the router.

Which router? The OM2P or the router connected to your ISP?

Mike G

First, I’m not a network guru by any means. My knowledge comes from hobbies and a basic desire to understand stuff.

A typical home router has LAN ports and a WAN port. The WAN port connects networks together. The LAN port connects device devices together.

Let’s say you have two routers. Router A connects to a cable/DSL modem through the WAN port. Router B’s LAN port is connected to one of router A’s LAN ports. That is like adding a switch to the network. All the devices attached to Router A and Router B are on the same subnet and can talk to each other.

However, if Router B’s WAN port connects to one of router A’s LAN ports then we have two isolated networks. The LAN devices on Router A can talk to each other and the devices on Router B can talk to each other. The devices on A can not talk to B and B cannot talk to A. However, both B and A can get to the Internet.

The devices connected to Router A use Router A as the gateway. The devices connected to Router B use Router B as the gateway. Router B’s traffic passes through Router A on its way to and from the internet.

P!-Ro

The OM2P. I found this reason online, but I'm still looking for a solution:

firmware-ng uses DHCP to determine whether the connection on a LAN port is an internet connection or a client wanting to be bridged into the network. If there are no DHCP requests from clients and no answers for the DHCP requests firmware-ng will remain in that state. The reason for this behavior is quite simple (the solution is not): Bridging a client into the mesh comes with the risk of bridging a working LAN into the mesh, thereby getting into a state which we call "DHCP poisoning". The mesh will flood the LAN with its own DHCP replies throwing the LAN into chaos. If we do what you are suggesting we will make things worse.
We have to come up with a clever way of detecting the static IP client without increasing the risk for LAN poisoning.

P!-Ro

I have been searching the web with the only result on static IP's on the OM2P being "it's not possible." However, I don't believe this since I can ssh into the router which is based off of linux. I don't have time tonight, but I think my best option is to try using the route command to modify my IP table to forward traffic for my spinneret's IP to that ethernet port.

Phil Pilgrim (PhiPi)

Routers are dirt cheap these days, and coaxing the improbable/impossible out of a recalcitrant unit can be soul-sucking. Have you considered dumping the one you have for one that will work the way you want it to?

-Phil

P!-Ro

Part of the problem is the nature of what I am trying to do isn't all that simple. I don't want to use just any router, I am using the om2p because of it's meshing capabilities. The reason I desire this is because I want to be able to get many miles of wireless range. I am currently working on a ground robot with an atv base, but I can someday see using a quadricopter with one of these routers in the air picking up the wireless signal and repeating it to a ground robot or increasing the flying distance of another quadricopter. And since the network is meshed together, every robot will be able to send data over the same network, and every robot connected will be able to repeat the signal farther out for another robot. If I knew of a better router to do this I would have no problem trying it out.

P!-Ro

I found some great DHCP code Roy made that allows my spinneret to work with my router. I still have a long way to go before I'll be happy with my setup, because it turns out the routers will only start up correctly if connected to the internet. I'll probably flash the routers with openwrt and batman-adv in the future to fix this, but at least I've figured out the original problem.

Link to Roy's code: http://forums.parallax.com/showthread.php?127298-HTTP-Demo-%28updated-11-22-2010-12-35am%29